


under the mistletoe

by Oak_Leaf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Character Study, Christmas, Christmas Party, F/M, First Kiss, Gen, Internalized Acephobia, Kiss-repulsion, Kissing, M/M, Mistletoe, Multi, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-MAG160, Pre-Canon, just a bucket of headcanons and projecting onto jon, just all over the timeline, post-Watcher's Crown, sex-repulsion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21912622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oak_Leaf/pseuds/Oak_Leaf
Summary: Jon, through the years, discovering that his particular brand of asexual means he isn't fond of kissing.Also, it's Christmas.
Relationships: Archives Staff, Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 7
Kudos: 255
Collections: Repulsed/Averse Ace Jon Archivist





	under the mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> Doylist explanation: Jon and Martin do not kiss in the podcast, because Jonny and Alex (rightly) think audio-only kisses sound gross
> 
> Watsonian explanation: Jon and Martin do not kiss in the podcast, because Jon Thinks Kissing Is Gross

Christmas parties, and all the to-do and shenanigans around mistletoe they supposedly entailed, hadn't been a consideration when he was a teenager--the consequence (perk, perhaps) of being an annoying boy with no friends to speak of. It wasn't until university that Jon found himself friendly with enough people to be invited to one. Georgie's friends, really, but she had befriended him, inexplicably, and so dragged him into her social circle.

The group plans the gathering--who is bringing what foods and liquor, which of their tiny, overfull flats they should host at, how much they're willing to overspend on decorations--and no one explicitly says, "Jon, you are invited." So Jon keeps quiet rather than assume. It's only when Georgie asks him if he'll be able to ask off work the evening they have planned, that Jon realizes he included.

"Oh. I suppose I can." It comes out more put off than he intended, but Georgie only shakes her head good naturedly. 

"Try, if you can. I'd hate for you to miss out." 

And so he attends the party. He wears a green jumper, and drinks rather more beer than he probably should, and he has conversations with the other people, and if he spends a certain portion of the evening against walls or in the kitchen, it's not the entire evening. 

More than once, he has gotten trapped in the kitchen while a couple blocks off the entryway where someone hung a sprig of mistletoe. When they do, he does his best to ignore them. Near the end of the night, Georgie finds him again. It's only been half an hour since he last saw her, but she's managed to get exponentially drunker.

"Jon!" she shouts. "What're you hiding in here for? We're doing trivia, an' you're on my team!" 

Jon lets her drag him out, back to the party, but she stops as they're leaving the kitchen.

He knocks into her. "Wha--"

"Look," Georgie giggles, in a way she wouldn't if she wasn't into her cups. She juts her chin upwards, gesturing. 

He looks. They're wedged in the doorframe together, and above them hangs the little tuft of mistletoe. 

"Mistletoe," Georgie explains, helpfully. 

"Right. Yeah." Jon swallows. "It's not actual mistletoe, you know. That is, I'm pretty sure it's plastic, but besides that, the leaves are more replicas of holly boughs than anything. Most places don't use anything like mistletoe--"

"Jon. D'ya wanna kiss me?" She is swaying into him. "You don't have to, but it might be fun."

There it is.

If Jon could think about it, he would wonder how much of this is the cheap whiskey splashed with egg nog she's had, and how much of this is Georgie. He will wonder, later, in anxious fits as he worries if she'll even want to be friends with him anymore. But Georgie will tease him about the mistletoe days after, and ask him if he'd like to get coffee sometime, like they have been getting coffee, but this time as more than just friends hanging out after class. Jon will say yes, that sounds fine, because he supposes that's what you do with a person after you've kissed them. 

But that will be later. He doesn't think now. Alcohol wraps his mind in a soft, thick blanket, and leads him on a string to follow whoever asks him.

So there's no reason not to kiss Georgie, so he does.

Their lips press together, and their noses bump, and the whiskey on her breath is strong, and Jon isn't entirely sure what to do with his hands so they hang at his sides. It's overall--odd. He doesn't have enough of his head on him to form an opinion, but it's certainly not whst he was expecting from kisses.

When Georgie pulls back and grins at him, sloppy and bright, that he does enjoy.

  
  


* * *

At the request of the others, Elias gives permission for the Archives staff to have their own little holiday party. Jon only discovers this when he steos out of his office at the end of the day to see Tim stood up on a chair hanging tinsel off one of the shelves. 

"What," he demands, "are you doing?" 

Tim grins at him over his shoulder. "Getting ready for the festivities, boss." 

Jon pinches his nose. "What on earth are you going on about?"

"Office party," Sasha chimes in, coming down the stairs with a tray of colorfully decorated cookies, Martin on her heels. "You know, it's the holidays."

"The Institute _has_ a holiday party, and it was last week."

"Right, but you didn't go. You never come to the party." 

"And you need some kind of holiday cheer so you don't turn into a gloomy starched shirt," Tim says.

"We just thought it might be fun," Martin offers. "Kind of...cozy. The rest of the institute doesn't really pay much attention to us down here anyway, so this way it's more like an actual party than just some work thing, yeah?" Martin smiles at him.

Jon frowns. "And was anyone going to notify me of these plans?" 

"I _did_ send you the memo," Sasha tells him. She's begun to help Tim finish with the tinsel. "It's probably still in your inbox if you check."

It probably is. He has been so busy trying to get the filing system updated, and with only two-thirds of his assistants really pulling their weight, some things may have started to slip through the cracks. That is unacceptable. He will have to be more observent in the future. 

Jon has been doing his best to maintain a professional and strict presence when around his staff, but he supposes one Christmas party won't hurt.

He sets his coat back down. "Very well," he cedes. "I can stay for an hour or so."

Tim and Sasha cheer, and Martin looks delighted. It starts tolerably enough. They eat the cookies--which are good and, Jon is surprised to discover, Martin's handiwork. Although Sasha helped with the decorating, he protests. Jon begrudgingly admits they aren't bad, and the two happily receive the compliment. 

There is nonalcoholic punch, and Sasha, Tim, and Martin swap Christmas and Hanukkah tales, and although Jon doesn't join in the conversation, he enjoys listening to them. And then the evening starts to derail when Tim tells them, "Oh, there's one piece of decoration I forgot." And produces a rubber mistletoe ornament. 

At the sight, Sasha groans. Martin's face pinks.

Jon stares at Tim. "That feels incredibly inappropriate."

"Nah, it's all in good fun, boss. Isn't it?" he asks the other two. 

"Didn't you get enough use out of that thing at last week?" But Sasha is laughing, so Jon doesn't press the issue.

He sits in his chair, a little more ill at ease than he was before. After some teasing, Sasha accepts a peck from Tim, and takes that opportunity to steel the mistletoe from him, spinning with it held high to kiss the still-sitting Martin on the curly top of his head.

"You thief!" Tim exclaims. 

He snatches it back from her, and Martin laughs at his dramatic attempts to plant one on him. He stands up, and Tim manages to get him on the shoulder, which is about as high as he can reach. 

Jon sits apart at lets them go about all this. Until Tim turns to him and jokes, "Looks like you're the only one left."

Jon gives Tim the most withering look he can sunmon. "And I intend to stay that way," he tells him stiffly. 

The smirk slips a little on Tim's face, as if he realizes he has crossed a line. "Aw, don't worry," he says, still light but apologetic. "I can take no for an answer. I'm a gentleman." He winks.

Which makes Sasha chortle, somehow, and the attention is drawn away from Jon as those two start off about one of Tim's latest romantic escapades. 

Martin sits down beside him again. "So..."

"I think I'll be heading out now."

"Oh. Oh, okay."

"Don't keep this going too long. I don't think they'd aporeciate you three partying until midnight." Jon gathers his coat and tells the others good night. 

On the tube, he has too much timd to think, and can't concentrate on any of the work he took home with him. He vaguely feels guilty for how uneasy the introduction of the mistletoe made him. It was unprofessional, it and Tim's behavior. And yet the others had seemed disturbed by it, none of them had even wanted to use it on Jon, besides Tim's joke. So what was the harm with it?

Nothing, as long as you weren't Jonathan Sims. 

Why does even the concept of kissing someone make his skin feel too tight and his stomach knot? He discovered his distaste for it over the course of his relationship with Georgie, and it has only followed him through every other attempt to date. It is just one on the laundry list of idiosyncracies that makes him feel other and inadequate. He wasn't even the one to broach the topic with Georgie; she had noticed his discomfort with kissing, his aversion to other physical activities--and sat them both down to have a talk about boundaries.

She had been understanding, accepting, even. Their relationship had adjusted. No more trying to instigate sex. Light kisses on the forehead. They hugged and held hands and cuddled, and Georgie had said she was fine with it, and then a year later, they were broken up. Jon does not flatter himself with the thought these were the only problems with him. He was and is, an ass, in so many other ways. Georgie hadn't even made mention of his thing with kissing and sex during the fights that preluded their break-up. 

Still, a part of him says, even now, who would want to put up with such a difficult person if you can't even get a shag or snog out of them? 

Jon works late into the night when he gets to his flat, and the following Monday, he pretends the party never happened.

* * *

There is an old stone church at the edge of an empty, too-quiet town. Usually, Jon and Martin make an effort to avoid churches or synagogues or the rare mosque, as the Fears tend to gravitate towards them. They aren't sure why. Perhaps these places house fear more easily than others--perhaps the opposiye, and the Entities are drawn to pervese these places that were meant to stand against the very things they feed on. In either case, Jon would rather hurry past the old church to scout the rest of the town, but out in front of the building stands a little apple tree.

It must have been planted only a few years before ( _yes, in memory of Maggie Ferguson, a small child who had attended the church with her parents before she died, drowned while swimming in a neighbor's pond_ ), and what is likely its first fruit ( _it is, the vicar had been waiting so expectantly for them to ripen so he could take the apples to Maggie's parents, but he had been killed by a follower of The Lightless Flame within the week after the Watcher's crown_ ) hang sparsely from its thin branches. They're little, lumpy things. Probably bitter. Possibly contaminated by The Filth. 

Martin's eyes light up when he catches sight of the tree. So Jon strays off their course, leading them to scramble over the low wall around the church--or it Martin's case, step effortlessly over it-- and to the tree.

The apples, miraculously, are not filled with bugs or rot, or teeth, even. They pack several away in the rucksack on Martin's back, and Jon takes a moment to draw out a clean knife, not the gore-splattered one he is wielding. With it, he slices one apple in half for them to share. Martin takes his in his free hand, keeping the pistol they found under a floor board in Daisy's safe house. 

Jon bites into his half, partially out of habit from before, mostly for Martin's sake. Traditional might not do much to sustain him, but it's been weeks without a proper statement, and it will make Martin feel better to see him eat something.

It is a little bitter, but the crisp juice feels like it wakes up his mouth. And he knows it must be a welcome change for Martin, and nothing but canned, often-cold food. Martin makes a noise of surprise bedide him, and Jon looks over in concern, only to find him peering into the tree with a look of disbelief. 

"What is--oh."

"Yeah," Martin says, gesturing at the clusters of evergreen leaves clinging to the upper branches of the tree that do not look like apple leaves at all. Still green berries are beginning to griw among them, Jon sees. V _iscum Album_. (He isn't sure if he knew that or Knew that.) Strange to see it do far north.

"A lot if people would know mistletoe in the wild if they saw it," Jon remarks. "Most stores and films use holly as a stand in, which makes this less recognizable." 

"My grandmum and grandad had a tree in their yard--oak, I think? It had mistletoe growing on it. I remember visiting them before they passed on, and grandad use to point it out. One time, he climbed all the way up the tree to get some, and hug it over grandmum's chair."

The information trickles into Jon, not enough to satisfy him, but a taste, at least. He breathes deep.

The two regard the plant for a moment. 

"Little early for Christmas," Jon comments.

Martin gives an almost-laugh, and Jon feels pleased. He's almost blushing, too, ( _he used to fantasize about being under the mistletoe with Jon, oh, God, did he ever. There was that one Christmas back in the archives, before everything went bad, when he had such a desperate crush on Jon. Tim had held a rubber sprig in his hands and bantered with Sasha, and Martin had sat on a desk beside Jon and imagined plucking the mistletoe up and leaning over and pressing his mouth to--_ ) and Jon feels a little less pleased.

If he wasn't who he was--if they weren't where they were, in the middle of an apocalypse, outside an abandoned town, in a world set-upon by monsters ( _that he let in, summoned by his voice_ )--well. Finding yourself under the mistletoe with someone you love is supposed to be a good time, isn't it?

Jon can't even do well with hugs these days. After the coffin, being inside The Buried has given him a hard time with the pressure of being held. If arms are around him too long, if they squeeze too tight, he starts to panic. He wishes he didn't. But he does.

Martin crunches the last of his apple in his mouth, and with the open hand that gives him, he takes one of Jon's. Their fingers intertwine and Martin pumps his hand, once, twice. Bending his neck, he brings his head down to bunp their heads gently together. He smiles at Jon. Jon smiles back. 

They leave the tree behind and start off down the empty road again.


End file.
